A Square of Sky E-Book

Janina David

• Herausgeber: Eland Publishing
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012

Seitenzahl: 791

Beschreibung

At the age of nine Janina David led a sheltered life with her prosperous Jewish family in Poland. A year later they were all on the verge of starvation, sharing a small room in the Warsaw ghetto. When it became clear that none of them was likely to survive, the thirteen-year-old girl was smuggled out to live with family friends. When their home became too dangerous, she was sent with false identity papers to a Catholic convent, where she lived in constant fear of being discovered. In this memoir David records the events around her through the eyes of a child, lonely and terrified, yet her determination to survive reads like a testament to the resilience of the human spirit.

Leseprobe

A Square of Sky

A Wartime Childhood: from Ghetto to Convent

JANINA DAVID

To the Memory of my Parents

Contents

Title Page

Dedication

PART ONE A Square of Sky

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

26

PART TWO A Touch of Earth

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

26

27

Afterword

About the Author

Copyright

PART ONE

A Square of Sky

1

THE SCENT OF ripening apples and pears fills the small room. There is a row of fruit on the windowsill where the sun will put lovely colour on their cheeks. Behind the half-open window the orchard dreams and murmurs, and behind the orchard, watchful and protective, stands the whispering wall of the forest. From every window of the house and from every road outside one can see the dark line of the trees enclosing the village. They come up to the road facing our house: the tall, dark firs and pines, rough and sticky with resin; the solid oaks with shiny, beautifully cut-out leaves, which make the best crowns when we play kings in the forest; and between their gnarled trunks the silver birches dance and sway, princesses and brides in green summer robes which change to a cascade of gold in the early autumn, when holidays come to an end and it is time to devise a happy ending to my summer tales and leave all the heroines in a state of blissful suspension till the next year.

The night air throbs with the singing of frogs, and the village dogs add their sharp comment. A night bird tries out a new song outside my window and inside the room a fly, caught on the strip of sticky paper, buzzes furiously. From the verandah come whispers and smothered giggles. They are all there, impatient and nervous, waiting for Stefa to give the word, waiting to start on another of their nightly expeditions to the orchard.

Stefa’s voice murmurs: ‘Let’s see if she is asleep.’

Another voice pleads: ‘Let me come too,’ and my heart turns over as I recognise Tadek. Quickly I arrange myself on the pillow, spreading my hair in a halo. I pull the sheet up to my chin and fold my hands like the Sleeping Beauty in my book of fairytales. The door creaks. Through half-closed eyes I can see Stefa holding a candle and, behind her, the curly black mop and Tadek’s shiny eyes. They peer at me in silence while I hold my breath and smile sweetly to my dreams. The door closes.

‘She is fast asleep,’ says Stefa.

‘She is very pretty,’ says Tadek simultaneously, and there is a burst of smothered laughter as they all scramble down the verandah’s wall and scatter into the orchard. Now they will sing and play the guitar and hide-and-seek among the trees, and sometime in the night Stefa will return with her apron full of half-ripe fruit.

I hear them passing under my window, and soon their voices grow dimmer and mingle with the whispers of trees across the road. I drift after them in a happy dream. It is summer 1939 and I am nine years old.

The village of Crossways, a typical Polish village, consisted of about a hundred farmhouses and summer villas, scattered among the woods. It had a general store-cum-post office, and a couple of guesthouses with a beer-garden on the main road.

After our sudden reversal of fortune two years earlier, when the family’s flour mill burned down one summer night, giving the whole town a remarkable pyrotechnic display, Mother decided that we could no longer afford to spend our holidays abroad. As a result, Stefa and I were spending our second summer alone in the two tiny, whitewashed rooms in Crossways. The villa, divided into three small flats, housed besides ourselves another family, consisting of a nurse and two small boys. The third flat was occupied by the two adolescent daughters of the owner of the house – Christina, the elder of the two, blonde and blue-eyed, and Janice, who was as dark as myself. To me the fascinating thing about them was that they had two mothers, both alive. But Christina’s mother no longer lived in their house. Perhaps she did not like Janice’s mother who now lived there. The two sisters spent their holidays together in the villa and looked after the comfort of the tenants. Soon after our arrival last summer they were joined by their thirteen-year-old brother, and I chose him for my hero without a moment’s hesitation. Tadek must have been very short for his age, as he was only a head taller than me. His black curls grew low over his thick eyebrows and fell into his eyes, which, I decided, smouldered with the fire of genius. Dressed in a pair of khaki shorts, the only garment he seemed to possess, suntanned like a coffee bean, he was for me the glorious example of unsupervised existence, for which I sighed enviously. Tadek climbed trees and fences, swam in the frog pond, waded barefoot through the puddles and disappeared for hours, no one knew where. Often he spent the night in a tree or in the tool shed curled among the wood-shavings with the farmer’s cat.

I tried desperately to follow his example and earn his admiration, but, after a few attempts, was forced to retreat – sore and sunburned and bandaged up. I blamed my failure on Stefa and her stifling discipline, which left me no freedom, even on holidays.

The rules which regulated my existence in town were relaxed very little in the country. On hot, dry days I was allowed to run barefoot, and on some evenings I managed to put off bedtime by a few minutes. But my every waking moment was still surveyed by Stefa, who, left alone with me, took her responsibility very seriously.

Meals were taken at set times, and Stefa watched, ready to spoon-feed me if I refused to finish a dish. She still dressed and washed me as if I were a small child and forced me to lie down in the afternoon – just when the best games were played. I could hear the shouts and laughter of my friends and see them galloping around, while I lay stiff with fury in my deck chair, in full sunshine to acquire a tan, full of food and resentment and hating the entire world.

The summer days slid past, calm and uneventful. There were no lessons and I re-read my favourite books, lying among the pines. I wrote new poems and stories, went mushrooming with other children and tried to catch frogs around the pond. I collected butterflies and played endless games with the daughters of the caretaker who lived in the wooden barrack in the garden. It had taken me many days to count all the children in that family, and I found it hard to believe that there were actually ten of them. Ten little girls, all alike except for their size. All blonde and blue-eyed, thin and shy. They all somehow fitted into their two rooms at night and spilled out again early each morning – squealing, crawling and bouncing, carrying the youngest in their arms.

Mother and Father visited us on Sundays and listened to Stefa’s report on my behaviour during the week. Mother wanted to know if I had been eating well, and Father always asked if I had been naughty. And every week I trembled as I listened to Stefa’s account. One could never rely on her discretion.

Once a week the Scouts who camped in the woods built their fire in our grounds and we all sat far into the night around the blazing logs, singing and listening to stories. These nights were a highlight of my summer. Half asleep, but still begging Stefa to let me stay on, I watched the ring of faces around the fire, joined in the choir and followed the curling smoke with my eyes up to the dark blue sky where the stars listened to our song. Around us the forest swayed its thousand arms, the pines nodded and whispered, enclosing our little world in their protective embrace.

Stretched out among the pines on a soft cushion of moss, I contemplated our approaching return home. There were some exciting prospects to consider. Just before leaving town I had seen the new Disney film, Snow White. Our neighbours in the villa had the record of the songs, and I had learnt them all. I also spent the summer playing the main role.

I was a born actress, Stefa affirmed many times, though it did not sound like a compliment.

Leaning over the open well, I watched my image in the still water down below. I could see a branch of the pear tree against the blue circle of the sky and, below the branch, my own face. Just like the film, I thought, and started on the appropriate song. But instead of the Prince it was Stefa who appeared and shooed me away.

‘Never saw a child so in love with herself,’ she muttered. I managed to tear myself away, and throw a stone in the well. The shining blue surface became a round mouth which was swallowing convulsively the sky, the pear branch and me. I retreated, frightened.

Still, I should be able to sing all those songs at school. A point gained over Arela. I thought about my only serious rival in the class. Black-haired and black-eyed like myself, but aloof and haughty. We competed for the first place in every subject – except in painting, where Arela was unquestionably the best. Her father was a well-known painter and Arela clearly inherited his talent. We observed with wonder her choice of colours, which always differed from the rest of the class. Her human figures appeared full of movement – walking, running or sitting – and there was never any doubt as to what they were supposed to be doing.

I contemplated my own efforts with anger. Despite the minute details I always put in my illustrations and the lofty sentiments I tried to express, my figures lacked life. They were stilted little dummies, petrified in an obviously uncomfortable position, and with not a spark of life in their flat bodies.

Unable to beat Arela, I decided to become her best friend. But after some weeks of friendly overtures I had to admit that, incredibly, she did not want my friendship. She was a very quiet and self-possessed little girl, who chose her friends mainly outside school and in class preferred another girl’s company to mine. I found this completely incomprehensible and a proof of very poor taste.

It was some consolation to me that Arela was tone-deaf. I had a good voice and enjoyed singing as much as I loved writing poems, which was very much indeed. Snow White songs would be a great success.

My thoughts turned to the rest of the class. Izaak would still be there, but this year I should not sit with him. I had expiated my sin. The thought brought a guilty flush to my cheeks.

At the beginning of last year I shared a form with Margot, a timid, pale girl who had vowed eternal love for me from the start. Unfortunately, she would not keep quiet, and her constant attempts to attract my attention attracted the eye of the class mistress instead, who decided to separate us.

The form behind was shared by the two Izaaks – Big Izaak, a little ball of mischief, the most punished boy in class, completely unable to sit still, and Little Izaak, the dunce, the dirtiest, smelliest, most backward child in the whole school. No one ever wanted to sit with Little Izaak, and an order to share a form with him was considered a heavy punishment.

The class mistress decided that I was to move back to Big Izaak, and Little Izaak would come forward to share the form with Margot. A wave of dismay swept over me. There were smothered giggles in the class as Big Izaak jumped up grinning. The situation was much more serious than the teacher suspected.

It was customary in our class for the boys to chose their ‘girl friends’ at the beginning of each year. They declared their admiration in a more or less obvious way and during the frequent ‘wars’ between two camps took particular care to beat up the object of their affection. This did not prevent them from challenging their rivals to serious battles. During the last ‘great war’ Karol, my cavalier from the ancient times of kindergarten, was finally beaten up by Big Izaak. I applied my handkerchief to his bleeding nose and displayed complete indifference to Big Izaak’s efforts to win my attention. Patiently, he tried again and again, sending silver-wrapped chocolates under the forms in my direction. I collected silver paper and at times the temptation was very great. Still, my honour was at stake and the class watched while I kicked back the chocolates and remained unmoved. And now I had to submit to the order and share a form with him.

It was Margot who saved the situation. At the thought of sitting with Little Izaak she collapsed, sobbing desperately. This gave me an idea. Getting up timidly, I asked if I would be allowed to sit with Little Izaak. The teacher looked astonished and the class pricked up its ears. The teacher reminded me that it was Margot who was to be punished. I glanced at Little Izaak to see how he was taking it. He was sitting smiling inanely, pleased with the attention. And so in a much stronger voice I argued that Margot was really too unhappy, that Big Izaak was bad enough as a companion and that I did not mind in the least with whom I was sitting. There were a few titters. Anxiously, I offered to survey Little Izaak’s work, if only I were allowed to sit with him.

Deeply moved, the teacher gave her consent – and wrote in the class diary a comment on my selfless devotion to my friend and the nobility of my character. This honourable mention was also sent to my parents.

I moved my books to the other form. Big Izaak gave me a stricken look. The class rejoiced at his disappointment and jeered at my hypocrisy. Margot again collapsed, sobbing her gratitude, and Little Izaak sat smiling throughout the proceedings.

In the following months I often regretted my noble action. Little Izaak smelled to high heaven and never used the handkerchief which he badly needed. But his homework was so appalling that it spurred me to action. Day after day I corrected, coached and bullied him until, to everyone’s surprise, he began to show results. And although I was frequently reprimanded for letting him copy my work, the teacher kept me on that form till the end of the year, when she again declared that, thanks to my devotion, Little Izaak passed to the next class with the rest of us.

Thinking of this episode, I hoped that I would never see Little Izaak again. But, of course, I should be seeing him in a short time. In two weeks I should be back at school. And back at home. A wave of possessive tenderness swept over me as I thought of it. Ever since I could remember, home for me was the four-roomed, over-furnished flat on the first floor of our house. There was a small cobblestoned courtyard behind it, where in one corner a little clump of dusty greenery fought for survival. On one side of the enclosure stood the tiny two-roomed house of the caretaker, Stanislaw, who somehow managed to fit in this minute hut together with his wife and seven sons, who ranged from the bow-legged toddler to the handsome blacksmith apprentice. I imagined that they all fitted into each other like the set of wooden furniture in my doll’s house which formed a solid cube when assembled.

From our kitchen window I used to watch the younger boys and a few girls at their games. They were noisy and poorly dressed. They chased over the cobblestones and jumped over the open gutter. Their games involved an enormous amount of shouting, leaping and singing. They crowded around the street acrobats and beggars who visited the yard, and helped them to collect the pennies we dropped from the windows. Sometimes they called to me to join them, but, of course, I was never allowed to do so.

Behind the wall at the end of the yard stood a large dark building. That was a factory. I had no idea what was manufactured there and was inclined to believe that it existed solely for the production of rhythmic thuds which shook the whole structure. At midday the smokestack emitted a piercing whistle and the noise inside ceased. The windows of this mysterious establishment were usually closed and always quite opaque with soot. On rare occasions a young man appeared in one of them, and, poking his dirty face out, would inspect the neighbourhood, smiling at us in our window before dropping abruptly into the clanging darkness behind.

On the other side of the yard a wide cobblestoned street led to the outskirts of the town. The houses there were low and whitewashed, with red roofs. At the corner nearest to us stood the long building which at various times had been used as a hospital or army barracks. This part of the view remained in my memory perpetually bathed in sunshine. I must have seen it on a thousand rainy days, yet all I could remember were the gleaming white walls and the cherry roofs in the slanting rays of sunset which always seemed to linger in that peaceful corner.

On Sunday mornings the sun streaming through the kitchen window and the open doors, spread in warm lakes on the red floor of the dining-room. It glittered in the mirrors of the hall and in the crystal vase on the table. In the morning silence the sound of a hymn floated from the barracks and the song of bells from the church. An overwhelming feeling of peace and happiness would rush through me, urging me to jump out of bed and dance around the room, singing and shouting and waking the household. But, of course, I never dared to do such a thing. The morning silence must remain unbroken till my parents awoke and rang for break-fast. And the thought of food was enough to squash my joy and make me turn to the wall, hoping I could fall asleep and postpone the moment when Stefa appeared with a plate of semolina. In all my nine years of existence this was my daily breakfast, and I loathed it with all my heart. Mother maintained that this was the quickest and easiest food to push into my unwilling mouth and no amount of pleading, begging or retching would change her mind. To make it even easier and quicker, I was fed as soon as and sometimes even before I was awake, and often the first impression of the day was a hot spoon opening my mouth and a gluey mush pouring in.

I lay sullenly, waiting for the inevitable and wishing all kinds of disasters to intervene and spare me from my fate. If only we were too poor to afford semolina, how I would welcome a dry crust of bread and a glass of water. When Stefa appeared I greeted her with a sigh.

‘Hello, sunshine,’ she crooned. ‘Sulking from the moment her eyes are opened, what a charming child you are. You ought to be thankful for all the wonderful things you have – there are millions of children who would be glad to have what you throw out. Why are you so ungrateful? One of these days God will punish you …’ I stopped listening as the familiar arguments went on and the semolina poured in.

If only we were poor, if only I could be hungry and really enjoy the dry bread and potatoes and nothing else. If only I didn’t have to eat five times a day all those delicate, easily digested foods specially prepared for me because ever since my illness at the age of two I was supposed to be delicate and couldn’t eat half of what everybody else ate.

I was two years old when I crawled into a patch of unripe gooseberries during the brief stay in a country property belonging to our cousins. I had time to stuff myself full of the fruit before I was discovered and brought home. All I remembered now was waking in the darkness with a huge ball of pain filling my whole body. I remembered the panic on Mother’s face and my own fear and then the sudden departure in an old taxicab for town and doctor and help.

The car jolted and backfired, the engine wheezed and coughed and strained, and inside, in the complete darkness, surrounded by those inexplicable explosions and sensing Mother’s panic as the car swayed on the country roads and she clutched me ever tighter, I lay submerged in the most absolute terror and pain I have ever experienced.

The following months changed me from a placid, friendly child into an irritable tyrant. Up to then, according to Mother’s accounts, I had been a very easy child, endowed with a healthy appetite and capable of amusing myself quietly without demanding attention. The illness changed everything. The family doctor tried unsuccessfully a regime of diets, purges and enemas, until the very sight of a white-uniformed figure would send me screaming under the nearest piece of furniture, whence I was dragged, scratching and spitting, and had to be sat upon while the treatment was administered.

After a year of such mishandling I had changed from a happy, plump toddler to a thin and suspicious one, who ran away at the sight of strangers, sulked for hours, suffered from nightmares and was terrified of darkness and noise. I also refused to eat all the things that were good for me and begged to be given some ‘grown-up’ food which, Mother was certain, would kill me on the spot.

Thus semolina came to stay. The only way of expressing my revolt was through vomiting everything I was given, and this I did with enthusiasm, reducing the family to the same helpless rage they were inspiring in myself.

The fight went on until a year or so later I went down with scarlet fever. We had by then exhausted the supply of reliable nurses recommended by relatives. One after another they left, or were dismissed because of their inability to make me eat. When my spots appeared, chaos descended on the house. And then during one dark afternoon of dizziness and fever Stefa arrived. I remembered her timid entrance, and Mother presenting her as a friend who had come to visit. Stefa was as small and neat in appearance as Mother. She had curly, reddish-brown hair and smiling green eyes. There were freckles on her plump face. She came to inquire about the ‘situation’ and was judged by Mother as too young and inexperienced for her difficult task. However, as no other candidate appeared that day, Mother brought her in to convince everybody of her unsuitability. For the whole of that afternoon Stefa sat at my bedside, holding my hand and humming. There was an aura of peace and simplicity emanating from her which penetrated through the fever, bringing back an almost forgotten feeling of contentment. At the end of the day, when she tried to leave, I clung to her dress begging her to stay, and after some hesitation Mother sent Stanislaw for Stefa’s trunk.

And now after six years I could not imagine life without her. She was my mother, sister, best friend. The most loved and hated, every-day-used object of my affection, the only person on whom it was safe to vent my hostility and whose forgiveness I could beg without fear of losing face.

Father maintained that our mental age was roughly equal, and perhaps there was some truth in it. But her simplicity allowed her to treat me almost as a peer, to play with me the whole day long, teaching me games and songs, including some folk ballads which made Mother’s eyebrows shoot up in confusion. And when we were forbidden to sing some of them, at least neither of us knew why.

When it came to discipline, Stefa at first was inclined to take my side, until she was threatened with dismissal. She then began to order me around, and for her sake alone I obeyed, heaping silent curses on our oppressors.

As soon as Stefa settled in, Mother breathed a sigh of relief, and contracted my scarlet fever. In the ensuing confusion I was left completely in Stefa’s charge and returned to perfect health in a very short time.

Mother’s illness went on interminably, complicated by a pulmonary infection, and it was many days before I was allowed to see her. I remembered being carried into her bedroom and looking at her in the dull gold light of the bedside lamp. The air was full of medicine smell and Mother looked at me with reproach. I was carried out before a word was spoken, with a vague feeling that I had been naughty.

When it was certain that both of us had recovered, Father decided that I had become impossibly spoiled, and instigated a period of severity. In later years this was remembered as ‘the time Father took you in hand’, but strangely I could not remember anything of that period, which, however, left certain iron rules. In a few sharp sentences they managed to curb many of my independent excursions into the adult world.

‘Do as you are told’, ‘Don’t ask why’, ‘Don’t answer back’ were the standard replies to every inconvenient question, to every naughty shrug or rebellious look. Even the expressions on my face were surveyed and I was immediately punished for the slightest hint of dissatisfaction. If I queried a command or asked for an explanation I was told sharply to do it ‘Because’.

‘Because I tell you so,’ Mother would say with a sudden flash of anger. As for Father, the enormity of ever questioning his authority had never really occurred to me. Any such thought must have been strangled at birth without ever reaching the light of my knowledge.

In these circumstances I was very early driven back into myself. My mind was my secret garden where I could run riot – free, unconstricted by regulations and very scantily dressed. I could shout and slam doors and jump barefoot into puddles.

Sitting at the nursery window, my nose pressed to the glass, I stared at the world outside and saw myself in a grey tattered dress, cold and hungry, an orphan with nowhere to go, lost in the rain. The very thought filled me with delicious shivers. Nothing to eat. No shoes, no overcoat; of course, no gloves. No hateful white gloves which one must wear, even to play in the park! And no one to tell me what not to do. My eyes burned with tears of pity and delight.

Behind the deep golden curtains of the nursery the street was vibrating with life. The familiar clip-clop of horses, the squeaking and bumping of carriage wheels on the cobblestones, sometimes a car passing with a swish. At regular intervals the long-distance buses would pant up the hill. Wheezing and gasping and backfiring, they crawled up the long road which began just outside our house leading from the centre of the town out into the country. I heard their approach from far away, and followed their laborious progress tensely while they changed gears. With a new straining high-pitched note they began to climb, while, stiff with apprehension, I waited for the ear-splitting noise of the exhaust.

Ever since I could remember, noise hurt my ears and I paled and winced at the sound of slammed doors or cabdrivers’ cracking whips. When the cook chopped wood in the kitchen I hid in my room and put my head under a pillow. The thunderstorms were a terrible ordeal. To the noise of the thunder there was added the obvious fear on Stefa’s face and Mother’s nervousness. As the storm approached, Stefa, pale with anxiety, would hurriedly remove or cover all the mirrors and metal objects she could find. The windows were shut, the electricity turned off at the main and candles were brought in. As the lightning flashed, Stefa and Mother would start counting to find out how near the centre we were. If the thunder sounded near, Stefa crossed herself and prayed under her breath while Mother walked round the room telling me crossly not to be afraid.

Yet, scared as I was, I preferred these all-feminine sessions to the ones when Father was present. Father was fearless. Also he was infuriated by anyone showing fright. At the height of the storm he would stand at the open window admiring what he called ‘this magnificent spectacle’. He also expected me to admire it with him. He made me stand beside him while he held my arms so that I couldn’t cover my ears with my hands, and he scolded me if I winced or cried. In the end Mother would rescue me half conscious and quite rigid with terror and suppressed crying. As the thunderstorm passed I would develop a headache and spend hours miserable and sick and immensely guilty and humiliated by my lack of courage, while Father stormed around the house accusing Mother of making a weakling out of his only child.

But the thunderstorms were mercifully rare, and nothing could dim the flame of my love for Father. I admired him uncritically and boasted to other children and found it completely natural when they too fell under his spell at first meeting.

Once a year, on my birthday, Mother gave a party and for one afternoon the house was filled with children. As Mother disliked children and very rarely allowed me to visit my friends or to invite anyone home, this was a tremendous occasion and I was wild with excitement for weeks before. The first part of the afternoon was only moderately important, excepting, of course, the moment my guests arrived and I unpacked their gifts. Father usually disappeared while we sat at the table and I watched impatiently while my friends ate their way through mountains of cakes and fruit, and spilled chocolate on the tablecloth and each other’s dresses. The photographer with his horrible flashlight always nearly spoiled everything. I hated the flash and the pop of the bulb, and every year begged in vain to be left out of the happy group. When the eating was over, Father reappeared and the games began.

In a twinkling he had them all spellbound. His magic tricks, his stories and the endless games he invented drew the children like a magnet, and most often the parents and nurses joined in and begged for more. I watched them all crowding round him, climbing on his knees and hanging round his neck, feeling no jealousy, only enormous pride that he was my father. When the party was over and the exhausted guests departed, dragged by their nurses – who clearly found my father irresistible – he would remain with me. I had him for ever.

Lying in the woods at Crossways, I thought about our return to town and to ordinary life. My nursery waited, all white and blue, with masses of never-used toys and rows of books, my greatest treasure. And the nursery window would be there, draped in deep gold and screened with white muslin with a wide sill where I could sit and dream my dreams of poverty, adventure and independence.

From this window I could watch the row of dorozkis, the hansom cabs, waiting for customers at the corner. The drivers in their long, shapeless navy-blue coats stood in groups, talking, smoking and, if it was cold, stamping their feet and beating their arms against their sides. Strange foreign people with booming voices, living in their world ‘outside’. They were not entirely trustworthy and they didn’t like ‘us’. Opposite the house, across the road, the ground rose into a steep hill crowned at the top with a low crumbling brick wall. Behind the wall stretched the great Catholic cemetery, the mysterious and forbidden garden of the dead.

I went there sometimes with Stefa – in secret, of course – to lay flowers on her mother’s grave. Stefa knelt before the small mound of earth and prayed, while I tiptoed around among flowers and monuments looking at the strange and beautiful angels, fat babies with outspread wings and tall lovely women in sweeping gowns who stood on some graves with gently inclined heads and welcoming arms.

‘This is the Madonna,’ Stefa explained. ‘Mother of our Lord.’ And I nodded, awed by this sudden proximity to the God of whom I only had the haziest idea.

The cemetery was for me full of inexplicable mystery and delight. I knew that the marble and flowers hid dead bodies, but the dead were friendly, gentle beings who under the surface of the earth led their usual busy human lives. Stefa told me that their bodies were rotting and that eventually the worms ate all but their bones, but even that did not worry me. The cemetery was a few hundred yards from my nursery window, and to me it was an old and trusted neighbour.

Sometimes, stimulated by a particularly vivid account of someone’s death which Stefa, who loved funerals, related to the cook, I would dream of visiting the dead in their subterranean dwellings. I talked to them, lying stiffly in their coffins. I saw their bodies falling away in grey shreds, and shivered with horror at the masses of wriggly worms. I hated worms, but felt only pity for the poor defenceless dead. Father, of course, soon discovered this new preoccupation, and set about making it more constructive by explaining the work done by the worms in fertilising the earth and allowing flowers and fruit to grow. The idea of a dead body transforming itself into a beautiful flower stirred my imagination all the more. However, I saw no connection between the living and the dead.

During the last two years death had claimed three of my nearest relatives. Father’s parents and his younger sister died one after the other, and although I was not taken to the funerals I had later planted flowers on the large grave where they all lay together in the Jewish cemetery. And still the realisation of this fact escaped me. The dead in the cemetery had always been there. They were a special race, who could never have been anything else.

My daydreaming at the window was not sufficient to fill the empty hours, especially in the evenings. Stefa was often too busy, or simply unwilling, to play with me or read aloud. I knew all my books by heart and one day when I was about four years old, angered by her refusal to read, I took a book from the shelf and announced that I was going to read it myself. The book contained one long story told in verse, with many illustrations. I knew it by heart and I had recently discovered that each word corresponded to a group of signs on the line. I began to ‘read’, reciting the verse and pointing to each word as I said it. I genuinely believed that I was reading.

While I was thus occupied the door opened and my parents entered with a visitor. I did not lift my eyes, and felt them freezing with astonishment at the door. The guest approached and, leaning over me, followed my finger over the page. ‘She is reading!’ she exclaimed, and pointing to a word on the line below, asked me what it was. I recited the intervening words under my breath and, arriving at the indicated group of letters, pronounced the word correctly. The guest was flabbergasted.

Father, who saw through the trick quickly, led the lady out of the room, giving me a broad wink as he closed the door. My fame as the child genius spread through the family, and Stefa was given official permission to teach me to read. I threw myself into his new game with enormous enthusiasm, and made good progress. When at the age of five I was taken to the kindergarten I was a fluent and avid reader.

My entry into the competitive life of the kindergarten was simplified by the fact that in the meantime I had become a remarkably pretty child. Mother never tired of the story of my frightening ugliness at birth. When I was first deposited in her arms she turned away from me with a cry of horror. She was convinced I was a monkey. According to her, I was entirely covered in long black hair, had huge black crossed eyes and no nose at all. My hair fell out, to Mother’s relief, and over the years my eyes gradually uncrossed and a small, rather flat nose grew between them. By the time I was five people began to turn round in the street to get a second look, and my portraits appeared in all the photographers’ windows in the town. I was becoming fully aware of my looks and also of the fact that in some mysterious way I owed them to my father, since everyone affirmed I was the very image of him. Mother began devoting more and more time to my dresses. The visits to our dressmaker were as regular if not as dreaded as our visits to the hairdresser. The latter always provoked a crisis in the family. I cried for hours before and after each hair-cutting, and yelled at the top of my voice while in the chair. No amount of persuasion or appeals to my pride or vanity could make me submit in silence to the clippers and scissors. Unfortunately my hair grew low over my neck and had to be shaved frequently. Toes and fingers tightly curled, rigid with terror and reciting prayers and magic formulae, I submitted to the torture. My bloodcurdling shrieks when the clippers actually pinched, finally unnerved the hairdresser, and he refused to keep me on his list. Father, who disapproved of my cowardice but actually would have preferred me to have my hair long, took me to his barber. The operation was accomplished without a murmur in the all-male company, and I declared that his clippers didn’t pinch at all. From that time on I had my neck shaved at the barber’s and my hair cut at the hairdresser’s, who, Mother insisted, was the only one who knew how to shape my curls.

My dresses occupied me almost as much as my mother. At eight I would not show myself to guests or go for a walk without putting on a ‘proper’ dress. Dresses were changed at least twice a day and I knew exactly which slip, hat and shoes went with each of them. Each new dress had to be tried out in public before being approved. I wore them for walks with Mother or for visits to relatives. If they drew no comment they were judged a failure and would never be worn on important occasions. If, however, a stranger should turn in the street for a second look, or actually follow me drawing a copy, this was reported triumphantly on our return home.

Father fumed. ‘You are ruining the child, making a dummy of her, no better than yourself. All you think about is clothes!’ he stormed, seeing a box of new dresses arriving home.

Mother would reply that, after all, she could do as she pleased. Wasn’t he doing exactly what he wanted? With no thoughts for consequences? Besides, who was paying for the clothes? Was he perhaps under the impression that he was supporting the family? Earning his living? Paying his way? Were his salary equivalent to the amount of work he put in at the mill, we would have long ago starved to death. No, the money was hers, given to her by her father, to spend as she liked. Wasn’t she generous enough in supporting his family as well? And himself? How about the clothes he now wore? His shoes and expensive fur coats? Whose money paid for these? ‘When you married me you had one suit and two pairs of shoes – yes, two miserable old patched pairs of shoes!’ she would end triumphantly. This seemed somehow to clinch the argument.

Father rarely answered. He would stand at the window, staring outside. Then suddenly he turned, and whistling and smiling at me if I happened to be present, he would go to the hall, take his hat and coat, comb his hair carefully, adjust his tie – all this done slowly, deliberately, as if there were no woman screaming beside him or, what was worse, hissing in that ‘not for servants’ whisper. Then Father would go out and we would never know when to expect him back.

‘Gone to cry on the bosom of his dear family,’ Mother would announce to no one in particular, and then get on the phone and relate the whole incident to her own mother. Grandmother approved her treatment of Father and encouraged her to be firm. It was from her that I first heard divorce mentioned, and Stefa explained to me what it meant. Anxiously I awaited Father’s return. I wanted him to go away for good, taking me with him. I hated Mother and her family. I loved Father and all his relatives. I was enormously proud of being ‘the spitting image’ of my father, of having his eyes and his dark complexion and his curly hair, and most of all his name, which Mother spat at me as a curse whenever she was angry. I wanted to grow up to be exactly like him. I did not want to be like Mother.

But now Stefa explained that in case of divorce I would have to go with Mother because I was a girl. If you were a boy you could stay with your father, but a girl must stay with her mother. This was terrible news. I knew my parents were disappointed when I turned out to be a girl instead of the son they hoped to have. Father reconciled himself to me soon enough and I had never had cause to doubt his love, which was the only sure and immovable thing in my existence.

Mother was proud of me now, because of my appearance and success at school. But she often told me that she hated me and that I was a millstone round her neck. She had a quick temper, and when angry would say hateful things to anybody who happened to stand in her way. An hour later she forgot all about it and would swoop at me with kisses and hugs, and wonder aloud why I was reluctant to return her caresses. I was told that I was a cold, unfeeling child and that she wished she had had a son instead, like her sister.

Patiently I awaited Father’s return. As soon as I could hear his footsteps on the stairs, always running, taking two steps at a time, I would dash into the hall and open the door for him. There would be a great shout of joy as he swept me up, throwing me in the air, and all my pent-up feelings were released as I yelled, half in fear and half in delight, certain that he would always be there to catch me.

Mother with pinched lips would separate us with a reminder that he was getting me over-excited and that I would be sick. But she could not stop him taking me into the bedroom for his afternoon rest. There, lying on the sofa, we had our storytelling session. Father invented boarding schools of which he was the master and I the lady visitor. The stories he told about each of his pupils reduced me to tears or to such uncontrollable laughter that very often I did end up by being sick. In a quieter mood, we followed the pattern of the wallpaper, discovering strange landscapes and fantastic creatures among the plain symmetry of the design. I told him about my own imaginary adventures with my faithful companions, all girls, dressed in ballet costumes, in the wild mountains of Nepal. We understood each other perfectly and often without words. This bond between us grew stronger as time went on, excluding Mother almost completely. My entry into the ‘outside’ world only intensified it. I was proud to demonstrate every day what I had learned in the kindergarten. And though both Father and Mother admired my achievements, I had the feeling that Mother listened impatiently and often only pretended to pay attention. Plainly I wasn’t important and my achievements were ridiculous. It wasn’t my fault, it was only because I was a child and therefore not to be taken seriously. Father, on the contrary, took everything very seriously. Too seriously, I sometimes thought. He criticised, and wanted me to be quite perfect and grown-up in whatever I was doing. In this way he spoiled many pleasures by insisting on a standard I could not possibly reach.

He loved children, however, and was genuinely happy when at last I reached kindergarten age. To Mother it meant getting me out of the house and allowing her to use Stefa for domestic work.

I was terrified at first finding myself among all the other children, and for the first week Stefa had to stay with me. She marched with us on our walks in the park and I clung to her hand, anxious to demonstrate that I really belonged to her and not to the strange group around me.

Slowly, however, I was drawn into the games and various activities which occupied our day. The discipline was fairly strict. We spent most of our time drawing, cutting out pictures and sticking them on paper, modelling with plasticine, careful not to dirty our smocks, or listening to stories, sitting on little wicker chairs. Sitting on the floor was forbidden. Occasionally we were taught dances and songs. I was flattered to discover that I could repeat every new song faultlessly after only one hearing, and the teacher always asked me to help her teach others. I could also read well while others learned their spelling.

Once settled, it was impossible for me to remain in a subordinate position. I was convinced of my own uniqueness and superiority, and set about convincing other children of this fact. The first step was to establish the undoubted superiority of my parents. They were the handsomest and the richest of all. In my opinion this was easily demonstrated: I was the only child brought to and fetched from the place in a carriage and pair. And on the first visit my parents paid me there, Father organised a noisy ‘cops and robbers’ chase which brought protests from the neighbours but certainly won over all the children. They also agreed that Mother was beautiful and smelled deliciously. But none dared to approach her. Her dislike of children was quite obvious as she stood in the room, anxiously watching all those sticky fingers near her dress.

Fairly quickly I discovered that a hard blow with my fist or a pull of hair was more effective than sulks and tears. It forced obedience and respect. On the day when I was sent home in disgrace because I had torn Karol’s smock and knocked out his front tooth Mother looked truly shocked, but Father could not conceal his delight.

‘We’ll make a boy out of her yet!’ he exulted; and then, suddenly turning to me and with an obvious effort, he delivered a stern tirade about what well-brought-up little girls should not do.

It was while I was at the kindergarten that the greatest humiliation of my life occurred. Even now, despite the great experience and sophistication of my nine years, I blushed at the memory.

I loved dancing, and especially the group dancing where each one of us had a small solo part. I must have been a fairly graceful dancer too, because I was always given one of the main parts. Certainly I practised with enthusiasm, dancing round the flat and improvising to radio music or to my own endless singing. For our end-of-the-year celebrations I was given a role of a dying butterfly, and for weeks I tripped round the carpets on tiptoe, waving my arms and subsiding suddenly in the middle of the floor, to the great annoyance of everybody. Father, anxious, as always, to improve my performance, gave me some lessons and the delighted teacher declared that I now danced like a rippling waterfall, which was not exactly suitable for a butterfly but was much more graceful than my previous efforts. Some days later, dining with Mother at her parents’ home, I offered to perform for them. The whole family assembled in the drawing-room, while with eyes half closed I turned round and round, rippling my arms from shoulders to fingertips and giving – I thought – a moving imitation of the life of a butterfly, flying in the sunshine and dying at sunset in a graceful tangle of fluttering wings and legs.

I was dancing and singing the pathetic tale when I was suddenly aware of strange noises from the audience. At first I was too absorbed in my performance to pay attention, but when the song ended and I lay folded on the floor there was no more doubt possible. Incredulously, I opened my eyes. Around the room the family writhed, helpless with laughter. They were wiping their eyes and throwing their arms round each other, convulsed and speechless. In the doorway Sophie, the housekeeper, crowed like a cock and, suddenly throwing her apron over her head, escaped blindfolded to the kitchen. Seeing that I had quite finished dying, the family gave me tremendous applause and asked for an encore.

I was bewildered. ‘It is not supposed to be funny, I am dying!’ I protested, my voice already shaking with tears. This brought new howls of mirth and an offer from one of the uncles to pin me immediately into his butterfly collection. My mortification was boundless. Still sitting on the floor, I burst into tears. I refused to listen to Mother, who accused me of being rude and ungrateful. I was spoiling their afternoon, I had no manners. It was perfectly all right for them to laugh at me. I was a ridiculous, pretentious child. Grandfather came to my rescue and carried me out of the room, but it took him a very long time to stop my tears and I sulked for the rest of the day.

Back at home, I was unable to tell Father what had happened. I was certain that, had he been there, no one would have dared to laugh. After all, I was dancing as he had taught me, so to a certain extent he was humiliated with me. Mother declared that I had no sense of proportion and, what was worse, no sense of humour either.

For months afterwards I was pestered by the family to dance the butterfly. Needless to say, no one saw me dancing again. When the urge became overpowering I locked the nursery doors, until the day when Stefa found them locked and, suspicious of what was going on, informed my parents. After that the nursery key was removed and I gave up dancing.

At that time the family’s fortunes prospered, and every year we went abroad to a fashionable seaside resort. I approached this yearly upheaval with mixed feelings. I enjoyed the preparations, new clothes, suitcases packed late into the night, but hated the train journey. I was sick hours before we left the house and right through the journey, so that Father refused to share the compartment with us. Stefa joined me in my misery, and Mother, sighing and complaining, dispensed lemon juice and black coffee to both of us with equal lack of success.

Once there, however, my happiness was great. I loved discarding all my clothes and living the whole day on the beach. During my first summer I refused to bathe in the sea. The noise and speed of the waves terrified me. When Mother tried to take me with her into the water I screamed so desperately that some well-meaning German waddled over to us and told Mother off for inflicting cruel punishment on her little sister. Mother replied in her perfect German that she could do what she wanted with her own child, and the German, abashed, retreated to his sand-heap. When Father arrived on his brief visits I would, of course, let him take me into the sea. He tried to teach me to swim, but Mother, who could not swim and was afraid of water, refused to let him. She was certain that I would drown or at least catch a cold. Father who was probably afraid that I might indeed drown if I attempted to swim when left with Mother, desisted. This, of course, did not stop me from trying to swim and narrowly escaping drowning.

The accident happened during our second summer there, when I had progressed from panic fear of water to foolish bravado. I had gone with Mother deep in the water, and as the level was rising to my chin I decided to return to the beach. Rejecting Mother’s offer to accompany me, I started my slow way back, pushing against the waves, my eyes fixed on the red ball lying on the towels on the sand. Nearing the beach, I stumbled and fell head first into a mud-filled hole.

There was a brief struggle with the mud and water while enormous bells rang in my ears and filled my whole body with their sound. I knew that I must not open my mouth or cry, but after a few moments panic overcame me. As I tried to take a deep breath for a yell, something hit the inside of my chest and the bells exploded with a terrifying crash.

I opened my eyes, lying face down on the sand. Someone was moving my arms up and down and massaging my back. I coughed and spluttered and tried to sit up, and immediately Mother and Stefa were on top of me, crying and kissing and embracing and slapping and scolding me and each other.

Apparently, just as I disappeared Mother happened to turn round and, not seeing me in the water or on the beach, signalled to Stefa, who replied that I had not returned. Anxious, Mother walked back and on her way came upon a pair of feet thrashing in the shallow water. She grabbed them and heaved. She recognised me despite the coating of mud around my face, and summoned help. When I came to, there was a large crowd of half-naked bodies around me who all heaved sighs of relief at my first splutter, and offered en masse to teach Mother and myself to swim. Mother refused.

The days passed. I continued to play in the sand, collected shells and learned enough German to make myself understood by the fair-haired, white-skinned native children. I also developed a burning desire to be fair-haired and blue-eyed like them.

It was while we were returning from our first trip to Germany that, looking out of the train in Danzig, we saw a little girl entering the platform with her parents. She had long hair of pale gold colour, a white dress and a pink and white porcelain skin. She looked incredibly clean and neat.

‘Look at that child!’ Mother said to Stefa. ‘Why is it that ours can never look so white and somehow – tidy?’ They looked at me and I hung my head, feeling guilty. What would I not have given for the blonde hair, the blue eyes and the white skin? My blue-eyed girl friends assured me that they saw the world through a sort of blue haze, and I was sure I saw it in more sombre colours than they.

On our return home from that first summer at the sea I said goodbye to the kindergarten and prepared for school.

In view of the growing discrimination against Jews in schools and universities it was decided to send me to the only Jewish school in town. Housed in a gloomy old building on the outskirts of the town, clumsily converted from a tenement house, it contained on its three crowded floors both the elementary and the high school. Its academic standing was among the highest in the country. The classrooms were overcrowded and there was no proper playground, but at least there was no fear of unpleasantness, no obstacle to promotion.

From my earliest days the importance of school was impressed on me. To be at school was the greatest privilege a child could hope for. It was the key to a glorious future when one could do exactly as one pleased. The far-off matriculation was the golden gate to that future. Beyond that lay the whole universe, waiting to be discovered. How many times my questions had been parried with, ‘Wait till you get to school, then you will know.’ I was full of questions which were to be answered at last. Also, for the first time I knew – and the family had acknowledged – that I was growing up. I was no longer a small child. Mother took me for my entrance exam and we did sums and recited poetry all the way there. Running beside Mother, who seemed nervous and preoccupied, I felt full of enthusiasm for the unknown examiner, eager to demonstrate what I had learned in the kindergarten and to prove to him that I deserved the honour of entering his school.

The exam was easy and I passed to the second grade. The director told Mother that I was ready for the third, but there I would be the youngest by two years and might find myself isolated from the other children. Also I would have to repeat the last year of the elementary school, as there was a minimum age for entering high school.

Mother was very pleased with my achievement and declared that I must keep it up. We went on a shopping spree, buying books, pens and pencils, a leather pencil-holder, hand-painted and zipped up one side, and a heart-shaped pencil-sharpener in red glass. Then came a heavy leather satchel to be strapped on to my back. This was good for my posture and much wiser, so we were assured, than an attaché case, which would pull me to one side.

To end the day Mother ordered three school uniforms, one bright blue and therefore quite useless for school, and several school overalls which were the regulation wear for all the pupils.

The standard overall was in black or navy serge. Mine were in royal blue taffeta with large mother-of-pearl buttons and stiff white collars, much wider than the prescribed ones.

From my first day at school I had thus proclaimed that I was different. The taffeta swished and crackled with every movement, and had I worn a bell round my neck I could not have been more conspicuous.

To establish my position in a group which had already passed through a year together wasn’t as easy as breaking into the kindergarten. Left to myself I might have been content with the passive role of a follower, but my long preparation for school life was against me. The family expected me to be the first in every subject, and that included popularity. I had no difficulty with reading and little trouble with writing. I read through all my school books in the first few weeks and sat, bored, listening to my fellow pupils stuttering through the stories I knew by heart. Only arithmetic presented a problem. Father decided to help me with this subject from the very beginning. Other subjects were left to Mother and she saw to it that I prepared my homework. I was examined every day on what I had learned, and it was quite unthinkable to let me do my work by myself. Mother’s enthusiasm was infectious. She suggested various ways of learning and memorising difficult things and she showed surprising patience and understanding. But maths had always been her blind spot and she passed me to Father for further supervision. And there the drama began.

Father, a gifted mathematician, decided that his daughter must follow in his steps. He did not admit the possibility that I might have inherited Mother’s ‘blind spot’ or that his methods of teaching, remembered from his years of Russian gymnasium, might not be the best in the world.

The arithmetic sessions became a nightmare. The moment I entered the room, holding my book in a trembling hand, Father – the beloved if always slightly frightening companion – became a terrifying deity who spoke in a booming voice, recited incomprehensible formulas and demanded that I should repeat them after him. Learning by rota and memorising whole chapters was the method used in his own school-time and, recalling his own lessons, he now made me learn many formulas and systems not used in our school and much too advanced for my limited comprehension. I had no means of using them or even understanding their use. Thoroughly confused and frightened out of every vestige of intelligence, I recited them in a trembling voice, watching his face for a sign of a sudden outburst of anger. These were the only occasions when he raised his voice when speaking to me, and the sudden explosions of: ‘Do you understand this?’ ‘What am I talking about now?’ and, ‘How will you apply this to your problem?’ threw me in such confusion that I stared at him open-mouthed, my mind a complete blank. This would provoke him to a fury and he pounded the table with the books and shook them in front of my face, calling me a congenital idiot, an ungrateful daughter and a disgrace to the family. The lessons ended invariably with Mother bursting on the scene and leading me away from the ‘stone-hearted brute’. At the end of my first year at school I was firmly convinced that I would never understand anything remotely connected with figures, having inherited this disability from Mother.